TEAROOMS AWARD

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 264, 4 August 1937, Page 5

TEAROOMS AWARD

Question of Interpretation

By Telegraph—Press Association. Hamilton, August 3.

An interpretation of the New Zealand Tea Rooms and Restaurant Employees’ Award, 1936, was questioned in the Magistrate’s Court, Hamilton, to-day, when the Labour Department claimed a £lO penalty against Adams and Sons, caterers, Auckland, for an alleged breach of the award in that the firm under-paid a casual pantrymaid at the Te Rapa race meeting on February 20. A further claim for a penalty of £lO was brought on the grounds that defendant failed to pay travelling time to the pantrymaid. ' The defence submitted that the award was anomalous and they desired an early clarification of the position. An alteration to the interpretation as at present understood by all caterers in New Zealand would meant that thousands of pounds would have to be paid in back wages, and, further, until a definite ruling was obtained no company could tender for race meetings with any degree of safety for fear that a big loss would be made. The dispute mainly boncerned clauses 7 and 8 of the award which 'detailed different rates of wages for casual employees engaged on a firm’s premises or away from them. Defendant submitted that they had only a depot at Auckland, where no cooking was done, whereas plant was kept at each racecourse. Thus the racecourse was the firm’s premises. The Labour Department did not agree with this, but admitted that the award was ambiguous. The magistrate’s decision was reserved.